February 3, 2013

Painting the Station

This weekend, my buddies and I had plans to head out to Farmington Bay to shoot some Bald Eagles. We figured that we might as well get up a little early for some light painting. So, we braved the cold and met up at a local train station. Normally, when we paint, we are in pretty dark conditions. Because the lights of the station made things pretty bright we had to change up our techniques a bit by shooting much shorter exposures (15-30 seconds) at really small apertures (f/16-f/22).

These first tow images begged to be black and white. I love the mood created by the shadows and contrast.

The fog was pretty thick at the station and apparently on the front of my lens as well.

I applied some pretty heavy processing to this one. I like the gritty feel of it.

These next three images are all composites. Because wee had to shoot pretty quick exposures,

each element in these images was shot individually and then combined in CS5.

And, because I know someone will ask, this is a commuter train station and we were there hours before the first scheduled train.